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In the summer of 1908 Kelly made a number of oil sketches at Etretat in Normandy, which he visited for a week. He aimed to become a portrait painter, and was already sending portraits to the annual Paris Salons. The people he hoped would offer him commissions belonged to fashionable society, and Kelly was anxious to be seen at places on the social circuit such as Etretat.

The artist told the donor that he painted this panel while seated on a raft moored a short distance from the water's edge and that the people on the beach are facing away from the artist since they were appalled by his clothes. Two other panels exist painted under the same circumstances: they are Etretât: From the Sea! oil on panel 5 7/8 × 7 1/8 (149 × 180) shown at Kelly's retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy in October–December 1957 (101) and Etretât - The Beach From a Raft, oil on panel 8 1/2 × 10 1/2 (215 × 266), dated on the reverse ‘30th July 1908’, shown at the Sir Gerald Kelly exhibition at the Fine Art Society, December 1975–January 1976 (25). T03653 appears to have been painted on a wooden box lid, since there is a screw hole for a knob on the reverse of the panel.